Glass sheets can be coated with a stack of transparent, metal-containing films to vary the optical properties of the coated sheets. Particularly desirable are coatings characterized by their ability to readily transmit visible light while minimizing the transmittance of other wavelengths of light, particularly light in the infrared spectrum. These characteristics are useful for minimizing radiative heat transfer without impairing visibility, and coated glass of this type is useful as architectural glass, glass for use as automobile windows, etc.
Coatings having the characteristics of high transmittance and low emissivity commonly include film stacks having one or more thin metallic films with high infrared reflectance that are disposed between antireflective dielectric films such as metal oxide films. The metallic films may be silver, and the metal oxide films may be the oxides of various metals aid metal alloys including zinc, tin, titanium, etc. Films of the type described commonly are deposited on glass substrates on a commercial production basis through the use of well known magnetron sputtering techniques.
It is often necessary to heat glass sheets to temperatures at or near the melting point of the glass to temper the glass or to enable the glass to be bent into desired shapes such as motor vehicle windshields. Coated glass articles often must be able to withstand high tempatures for periods of time up to several hours. Tempering, as is known, is particularly important for glass intended for use as automobile windshields; upon breaking, windshields desirably exhibit a break pattern in which they shatter into a great many small pieces rather than into large, dangerous sharp shards. Temperatures on the order of 600.degree. C. and above are required. Film stacks employing silver as an infrared reflective film often cannot withstand such temperatures without deterioration of the silver film. To avoid this problem, glass sheets can be heated and bent or tempered before they are coated, and later can be provided with the desired metal and metal oxide coatings. Particularly for bent glass articles, this procedure usually produces non-uniform coatings and is costly.
Another reported method for protecting a reflective metal film from deterioration at high temperatures involves sandwiching the silver film between protective films of an oxidizable metal such as titanium, these protective metal films being of sufficient thickness so that when a coated glass is heated to high temperatures, the protective metal films oxidize. Inasmuch as the oxides of metals commonly are more transparent than the metals themselves, the transmissivity of glass sheets bearing such coatings tends to increase upon heating. Reference is made to Huffer et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,790,922 and Finley U.S. Pat. No. 4,806,220.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,344,718 (Hartig et al.) describes the use of a film stack in which silver is sandwiched between films of nickel or nichrome, and the resulting sandwich is sandwiched between films of Si.sub.3 N.sub.4, the glass article having particular values of transmittance and emissivity. It is said that when a Ni:Cr (50:50) alloy is employed, the Cr during sputtering is converted at least in part to a nitride of Cr and that visible transmittance thus is improved. The ability of nickel, chromium and chromium nitride to transmit visible light, however, is not great, and as a result the transmissivity of glass articles that include films of nichrome may be somewhat less than desired.